


Muse

by Roselightfairy



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M, Magical Language, True Love's Kiss, True Names, artist!Gimli, based on the story of Pygmalion, mentions of past Gimli/other, please ignore any plot improbabilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-15 11:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18498007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy
Summary: Reincarnation/Second Singing AU.  Modern-day Gimli is a talented sculptor just finishing up the biggest and most unprecedented project of his life – a marble statue of what looks like an elf from some kind of high fantasy novel.  He’s never made anything this good before, especially not without a model – but strangely enough, he feels almost like he has seen this image before, as though in a long-ago dream - or even another life . . .





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My second piece for the Fandom Trumps Hate auction, for my second bidder, TAFKAB. This one is based on another one of her magnificent plotbunnies, this time putting Gimli in the role of Pygmalion. And then I asked, "ooh, what if it were a reincarnation AU?" and this story was born.
> 
> This story may become extended later, because one of my favorite thoughts (and things I haven't seen enough) is of reincarnation AUs where one character is unfamiliar to the modern world, or where they have to deal with the "after" of finding one another again. So possible mini-chapters may follow, but for now I'm just going to post the three chapters I have written, and hope that more comes.
> 
> (Also, please ignore the improbability of Gimli having the means to procure a large block of marble, or the time to work on the project. Let's assume that his considerable talents have gotten him enough attention that he's capable of wasting time and money on a self-indulgent project if he doesn't do it too often.)
> 
> (Oh, and just assume he has Norse ancestry or something. I didn't want to give him a whole new name for such a short story.)

“Staying late again, Gimli?”

Gimli jumped at James’s voice – and then was glad he hadn’t been holding his rasp.  The statue was in the fine-tuning stages – enough that if he’d been startled at the wrong moment he might have knocked off something irreplaceable.

He looked up, an irritated retort on his lips, but James was smiling at him – no harm meant – and Gimli subsided.  “Guess so,” he said.  “I still have a few things left to poke at tonight.”

James looked the statue up and down and shook his head.  “If you say so,” he said.  “Looks damned near perfect to me, but you know what you’re going for.”  His eyes settled on the statue’s midsection, and his eyebrows went up.  “That’s some level of detail, though.  Looks almost alive.  Should Myra be jealous?”

Gimli wondered if he should remind James that he and Myra had broken up weeks ago, but decided now was not the time – so he just laughed himself.  “What can I say – I’m just a slave to the muse like the rest of us.”

“I wish,” James sighed.  “If you get the chance, ask her to give me a call.  And don’t forget to turn the lights out when you leave!”

Gimli mumbled an affirmative, and then listened to the sound of James’s receding footsteps, before the studio door shut with a click.  James always locked it behind himself when he left, so the lights were all Gimli would have to remember to do himself.

He turned back to his statue, but he couldn’t remember what he had been inspecting before James had come in, so he sat back with a sigh to think for a moment.

 _A slave to the muse_.  It was a common joke among all those who rented the studio space, but never had he felt it as true as he did now.  This statue was shaping up to be the best piece of work he’d ever created, made in a rush of inspiration whose source he still couldn’t figure out.  It really did feel as though he had a muse – as though the statue itself had been his creative guide, urging him how to carve it, guiding his hand for every detail – though he had never seen an image before of what he was making.

And now he looked at it, and although he had never seen a picture, it was somehow – familiar.  As though this statue he’d been toiling for weeks to make was something he’d seen once, maybe in a dream he couldn’t remember.

 _It._   Gimli scoffed at himself.  Who did he think he was fooling?

This statue was not a _what_ but a _who_ – long-bodied and long-haired, taller than Gimli himself; lean-muscled and with delicate, androgynous features – but the body was male.  Gimli’s eyes flicked down, and he blushed.  Male indeed.

He couldn’t believe it himself when he’d started a nude marble sculpture – who did those anymore, now that the days of Michelangelo and Donatello were past?  Not to mention the _cost_ – he might have the means now, but he could remember back when he hadn’t, and the statue he created would have to be pretty spectacular to be worth the expense.

But the muse, or whatever it was, had seized him up in its grip, and he was powerless to resist.  His friends at the studio all made fun of him for it, but that was no less than he’d expected.  He would have joined in if it had been any one of them, after all.

But this –

He looked at his sculpture, and the sculpture looked back, with those large, oddly slanted eyes Gimli had felt compelled to spend days shaping.  He shivered.  His sculpture felt strangely alive, strangely compelling – almost as if it _were_ someone he’d known, a long time ago, in some dream he’d forgotten.

He reached up to finger the strangest feature of the figure– the tapered tips of the ears, like an elf from some high fantasy novel.  Those, too, Gimli did not understand – but those, too, he’d been unable _not_ to shape.

He shivered suddenly, goosebumps prickling up his arms and back, as though there were a ghost in the room with him.  He wouldn’t be getting any more work done tonight, at this rate – he packed up his things quickly and made to leave.  Usually, he’d throw a sheet over the statue before heading out, but tonight he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.  He slung his pack over one shoulder, went to the door, and couldn’t resist a last lingering glance at his statue before turning out the lights.

He couldn’t help feeling that the statue was looking back.

* * *

Gimli woke the next morning with urgency churning at his insides, as though he’d dreamed something unsettling that he couldn’t remember.  He skipped breakfast, heading straight for the studio instead.

He didn’t understand this strange restless energy, this _need_ to get to work.  He might have explained it away as breakup blues, except that it had been like this even before he and Myra had split.  In the last few weeks of their relationship he’d noticed that he wasn’t putting forth any energy anymore – like he’d just _ceased_ to feel, like he had all this energy waiting to be directed at a different source.

He’d called it quits soon after realizing that, not wanting to waste her time.  It had been the most amicable breakup of Gimli’s life, which made him think she’d been feeling the same way . . .  and the very next day, he had gone online in search of marble.

In the studio, earlier again than anyone else, Gimli stared at his statue.

It stared back.

“Who are you?” Gimli muttered, half-expecting an answer, for all that he knew it was ludicrous.  “What are you doing to me?”

It said nothing.

Gimli didn’t know why, but the longer he looked at the statue, the more he felt the strangest urge to cry.  The face was – it was like he was gazing off into a distance.  As though someone else was waiting there, but he didn’t know if he’d ever make it to find out.  A strange mixture of hope and yearning and –

And it was a statue!  It didn’t have feelings!

It wasn’t finished yet, Gimli knew, but even though he knew he ought to begin touching up the finer details, he could not stop staring.  It was like whatever muse had guided him had decided not to let him work until he had stared at the statue for a good long time first.

“Morning, Gimli!”  Samantha’s voice broke into his concentration, and he turned to look at where she’d just come in.  She stood outside his open door and gazed in to give his statue a once-over.  “That’s really coming together.  I mean, it looks done.  I can’t believe it’s only been a few weeks since you started.”

Gimli made a noncommittal noise, swallowing at the lump in his throat.

“Hey.”  Samantha frowned at him.  “You okay?”

Gimli cleared his throat.  “Yeah, fine.  I’m just . . .” He reached for an excuse.  “Not satisfied yet.”  Well, that was certainly true.

“You say that like it’s possible.”  Samantha laughed, but accepted it.  “Well, good luck with your touch-ups today.”

“You too,” he mumbled, waving as she headed off towards her own workshop.

As soon as she was gone, he closed his door and lowered the blinds on the small window in it.  Now he could work in privacy.

He talked to the statue today as he worked – as though he had turned some corner, and finally accepted it as a person.  First questions – _where did you come from; why did you choose me_ – and when those obviously went unanswered he lapsed into thoughtless chatter, narrating the steps of what he was doing, laughing at what the others must be thinking about him.  He was glad he’d closed the door, but after awhile even that ceased to matter to him.  It was as though he’d sunk into a strange mist, as though he had ceased to be part of the world and all that existed were him and his statue.  And it felt _right_ this way, though he had no idea why.  Almost companionable.

Once the statue had started taking shape as a man – or an elf, maybe? – Lily had suggested Gimli give it a name.  But he found himself reluctant to do that – as though it already had one, a name it just hadn’t revealed to him yet.

“What are your secrets?” he murmured, and the statue gave no answer.

He finished it that evening.  That, too, was unusual – Gimli had never before looked at a piece of his own work and known that it was finished.  There was always some little detail he could touch up, some bit of depth he could add.  But not this one.

That was not to say, however, that he was _satisfied_.  Something was still missing – something wasn’t quite right.  But it wasn’t something that could be fixed with a rasp or a riffler.

He tried.  He examined the whole body of the statue, from the tendons in the wrists to the definition of the calves to the wisp of hair falling over the forehead.  No detail was out of place, nothing needed to be added.  And yet something did – something _vital_.

Finally, late into the night, all the others long since departed, he found himself on his small stepstool, peering closely into the face.  The statue’s hands were held out in front of him, and Gimli found his own hands clasped in them as though to steady himself.  Hard, cold marble – but as it warmed with his skin, it felt almost – _almost_ – as though it could be alive.  The eyes should be following Gimli’s movements, but they were fixed – lifeless – and again it brought Gimli almost to tears, though it shouldn’t have.

His eyes fell to regard the statue’s lips: smooth, parted just slightly in that odd wistful look, perfect for –

Some part of him, deep inside, snorted at his thoughts.  As though he were a preteen girl with a poster of her favorite celebrity on her wall!  But he was no longer in control of his actions; that mist had surrounded him again, and all the rest of the world ceased to exist; it was only him and the statue, and he leaned forward, still balancing carefully on the stepstool, and pressed his lips to the statue’s cold marble mouth.

And – and – something _happened_.

At first it was just like it had been with the hands: cold warming with the touch of his own body heat.  But no – no, the mouth grew soft under his!  The lips parted further beneath his own, and then pressed forward, and –

The statue was kissing him _back_.

When he realized that, the mist around his mind dissipated all at once.  Gimli _squawked_ , and lurched backwards – wheeled – the stool beneath him skidded backwards and away, and he was falling, he was going to tumble to the floor and take the statue with him – but the hands he still held clasped in his own had turned from stone to flesh, and they _gripped him back_ and held him upright as his feet found the floor again; he opened his eyes, and the statue was looking down at him, alive and real and familiar as a long-forgotten dream –

He gasped for breath, and the once-sculpture did the same, wheezing as though he had come to life only to find himself dying, and for a moment they both stood there, catching their breath, not seeming to believe –

And then the statue blinked, and gazed down at him, and the wistful expression on his face was gone, replaced with utter disbelief.  He spoke, his voice more lilting and musical than any human voice Gimli had ever heard – only one word.

“Gimli?”

And then his eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the ground.


	2. Chapter 2

To his shame, Gimli did not have the presence of mind to catch his no-longer-statue before he hit the floor completely – but he did recover himself in time to stumble forward and intercept the head before it could smash into the now-empty pedestal that had held the sculpture.  And then he remained frozen where he was, on one knee, with one hand on the shoulder and the other behind the head of this – this –

The hair was very soft, Gimli could not help but notice, sliding like silk through his fingers.  And the marble had taken on color when it had come to life, color as well as texture.  This was a real person, a real, living –

Living?

Gimli swore.  He didn’t know the first thing about CPR, or checking for a pulse, or –

But no, no.  The man – the elf? – was breathing; Gimli could hear it, shallow but there.  But why had he fainted?  More – why was he here to begin with?

One thing he had not gained during his strange transition to life was clothing; Gimli suddenly blushed as he realized he was half-holding – had just _kissed_ – an unconscious and very naked man.  Elf?  A nude statue was one thing; it was a well-respected artistic tradition (or so he had defended himself when his friends had teased him, anyway), but this –

Gimli lowered him very gently to the floor, and then scrambled back a few steps.  He looked again at the pedestal, as though to reassure himself that it was indeed empty.  No statue stood there any longer, so he could not be imagining this.

Well . . .

After a moment of consideration, he gave his own arm a hard pinch, and immediately winced.  No, not a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation.  Probably.  Was it really true that pinching yourself was a way of testing if you were awake?

The naked elf half-stirred and made a strange groaning sound, and Gimli snapped back to attention.  First things first.

He found his covering sheet, wincing at the marble dust that covered it – but he had nothing else, so it would have to do.  Carefully, he eased the groaning elf up, wrapped the sheet around his body, and laid him carefully back down, straightening his bent legs.  Then he looked around, considering.  He had no pillow, but his jacket folded up would do – he slid that under the elf’s head, resisting the urge to let his hands linger in that impossibly smooth hair –

The eyes blinked open again, and Gimli froze.  It was like before: he was transfixed in the gaze, unable to move or speak or breathe – but far worse than before, for now he was staring at someone alive.

The elf on the floor blinked a few more times, squinting as though to make sense of his surroundings.  He coughed, frowned, and then said again, “Gimli?”

“Yes,” Gimli whispered, feeling as though he were in a dream.  This was not happening!  Statues did not simply come to life and speak to their sculptors!  And yet – and yet –

The elf said something else.  It sounded like gibberish, and yet it must be a language – something Gimli did not understand.

It was his turn to frown.  This could be an unexpected problem.  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said.

The eyes widened in what looked like panic, and he spoke again – a different language this time, and again Gimli shook his head, feeling a flash of the same.  What if they could never communicate?  And somehow this elf must be his responsibility, since he – it seemed – had created him!  What should he – what would he –?

“What of this?” the elf said this time – but he was not speaking English.  It was no language Gimli had ever heard before in his life; certainly no language he had ever made an effort to learn, but – “Do you understand me now?”

“I – I do,” he said, and to his shock, he was speaking the same language.  It wasn’t only the words that changed, but the cadence of his speech: his words were more formal than he’d ever spoken in his life before, but it came so naturally that he didn’t even have to think about it.  “I have never heard this tongue before, and yet I know it.  How can this be?”

“How can it – do you not know me, then?”  The eyes clouded over, and Gimli’s heart wrenched painfully in his chest at the sadness in them.  “After all this, do you know not who I am?”

“I” – Gimli hesitated.  _No!_ he wanted to say.  _No, I don’t know you!_  But for some reason the words would not form, even though they were the truth.

Or were they?

“I have never met you before in my life,” he said at last.  “But you are familiar to me, in a way I cannot explain.  As though I have seen you before, in some long-forgotten dream.”

The elf smiled – a smile not without sadness, but mostly achingly sweet, and the pain in Gimli’s chest eased at the sight of it.  “Then all is not lost,” he said softly.  “And after all I have already lost, I will not turn down a thread of hope when I see it.”  He laughed – loud and clear, and the sound set Gimli’s heart flipping in his chest.

“I say I may know you,” he said, “but – though it pains me to admit it – I do not remember your name.”

The elf – for it _was_ an elf, it must be, this was no normal human – reached out and took Gimli’s hand, turning it over and over between his own.  “Different, but the same,” he murmured.  “You are a craftsman still?”

“I” – Gimli looked around at his cluttered workshop, the marble dust and chips, the scattered tools, all in service of recalling this elf from – from whatever land he had haunted before.  “I suppose so.”

“I can see it.”  The elf’s fingers danced along Gimli’s, and then he reached up with one hand to touch his face.  “Your hair is near gone, and your magnificent beard is only stubble – but I know your eyes, and your soul, and your name.”  He smiled.  “I am Legolas.”

“Legolas,” Gimli breathed, and his chest filled with something warm and soft, like melting chocolate.

But looking around at his workshop had reminded him that it was night – no, it was early morning, by now, and there was no way this situation would be cleared up in the next few minutes – or even hours. “Well, Legolas,” he said, “I may not know whence you have come, or why, or even, truly, how – but I know that you know me, and I you somehow, and it seems we have much to discuss.  Will you come home with me?”

This time, the smile was positively lascivious, and Legolas sat up.  “Of course,” he said.

* * *

Gimli moved around his workshop in a flurry after that, picking things up and putting them down at random, trying to think what he might need.  Legolas could wear his jacket, but he had no spare clothes to cover him with.  He would have to just wear the sheet home; there was no other choice.  What might he need –

After a few minutes, he realized he was being ridiculous, and tried to calm himself.  He’d never read any kind of advice book for what to do if your statue suddenly came to life, but at least Legolas didn’t seem to mind.

“Okay,” Gimli said – in English, forgetting to speak that strange new language.  “Let me just turn off the lights and we’ll be out of here.”

Legolas gave him a questioning look, but Gimli just shook his head.  It didn’t matter.

When he turned out the lights, Legolas jumped, looking back and forth between the light switch and the bulb overhead.  “How – what” –

“It is . . .” Gimli floundered.  There was no word in this strange language for _electric_ , and he began to realize with a sinking in his stomach how much they had to explain – and all when he still didn’t even know how they knew each other, how Legolas had gotten here to begin with.  “I will explain later,” was all he could say.  “Just trust me.”

“I do not understand,” said Legolas softly.  “But trusting you is the easiest thing in any world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't mind the language thing; like I said, I'm taking a lot of shortcuts in this story. And besides, if a statue can come to life, I imagine a lot of other disbelief can be suspended.
> 
> (However, if you want to read a slightly different kind of reincarnation AU that deals with the complexity in careful, loving detail, read [Aulë’s Gift by daisynorbury](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2835887/chapters/6362303).)


	3. Chapter 3

It was a nerve-wracking journey home.  Legolas had first flinched at every strange thing he saw, and then subsided into a quiet, tense silence, clutching the sheet around himself as though he needed protection.  He made comments from time to time in one of the languages Gimli did not understand – but he could tell from the tone that they were disparaging.  And when they got into Gimli’s car to drive home, Legolas sat rigid and wide-eyed for the entirety of the ride, starting every time Gimli braked.

By the time they arrived, Gimli thought his nerves were about as frayed as his companion’s.  And not surprising, too – in the space of a very short time he’d watched a statue come to life before his eyes, learned he apparently spoke a language he didn’t even think existed, and realized that somehow – astonishingly, unbelievably – his statue _knew_ him.

When he unlocked the door to his apartment and guided Legolas inside, the rush of relief was so intense that it surprised him.  “Good,” he said.  “Now we are alone.”

“Yes.”  Legolas looked around him with quick, jerky motions, like a cautious cat.  Gimli almost expected to see those strange pointed ears of his twitching.  “Gimli,” he said uncertainly, “I do not know what is happening, but I can make a guess – only this world is so strange that I find I cannot believe even myself.  You can summon light at your fingers, but then you surround yourselves with machines that look more like monsters, and the air turns to mud in the lungs and tastes like Mordor, only more metallic.  Can it be that this is the Second Singing we were told to anticipate?”

Gimli shrugged.  “I am sorry to tell you this, but I haven’t a shade of an idea what you mean.”  He glanced at Legolas again, realizing that the elf still wore only a dusty sheet.  “Here, let me find you some clothes, and then we can talk.”

“If you must.”  A spark of mischief flashed into Legolas’s eyes, and Gimli flushed.  He might not know exactly what the relationship between him and Legolas was – or had been – or whatever – but he could certainly make a guess: not only from the way Legolas spoke to him, but also from his own reaction to the thought of Legolas’s naked body.

He found the simplest clothes he could think of – an old paint-stained T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts, no zippers or snaps that might be confusing to someone presumably from another world – and turned his back while Legolas dressed.  Maybe it was ridiculous – after all, he was intimately familiar with every proportion of Legolas’s body – but it felt much, much weirder to stare at him now that he was flesh and not marble.

Then they sat, and Legolas tucked his legs up and wrapped his arms around them.  The elf’s long limbs stuck out of the short sleeves even more than Gimli’s own did, and he realized that what he’d provided didn’t give much coverage.  “Are you cold?” he asked.

“I . . . I think so.”  Legolas shivered, and for a moment a look of fear flashed through the confusion on his face.

Gimli knew he had extra blankets somewhere, and if Legolas was going to stay the night, he would have to find them anyway.  He went rummaging around in the storage bins he kept behind the couch, before finally pulling out a blanket and draping it over Legolas’s shoulders.  Something about the action felt wrong, but he couldn’t figure out exactly why.

“There,” he said, returning to his spot.  “Now.  Tell me about you – and about me.  Tell me how you know me, and who we are to one another.”

“I will,” Legolas promised.  “But I had a thought, first, which I hope will make this simpler for us.”  He turned those intense eyes on Gimli, and again Gimli was helpless in their gaze.  “Do you remember your name?”

What a question!  Gimli tried not to laugh, since it was clear Legolas was so serious.  “You have spoken it many times already,” he said.  “Do you think I would answer to a name that was not my own?”

“ _Gimli_ , yes, but” – Legolas’s hands twisted in the blanket.  “And how should it be possible that you would have the same use-name in this world as in the last?” he murmured, as though to himself, but still in that shared language.  “It cannot be merely my fortune, so I must assume that your spirit knows itself, even if your conscious mind does not.  Yes.”  He nodded, as though he had made a decision, though his words had made no sense to Gimli.  “Are we alone?”

Gimli’s eyebrows rose.  “Do you think I could hide another in this small” – There was no word for _apartment_.  “Dwelling?”

“Perhaps not, but – truly alone?”  Legolas’s hands released the blanket and came forward to grasp Gimli’s again: the way they had touched before, when Legolas was only a statue.  Gimli knew it was too familiar for someone he hardly knew – but then, they must know one another very well indeed.  Legolas’s eyes had grown wider in their seriousness, and he leaned in so close that Gimli could feel his breath on his face.  “No one can hear us?  You are certain?”

Gimli couldn’t know what Legolas was thinking, but his solemnity was infectious; it was as though the air itself grew heavier around where they sat.  “I am,” he said.

Legolas nodded.  Swallowed.  “Very well,” he said, and leaned even closer, until his lips were brushing Gimli’s ear.  Goosebumps ran down Gimli’s neck, but he did not move.  “Then, my love, let me tell you your name,” Legolas breathed – and he did.

Everything stopped.

The words Legolas whispered were unfamiliar and yet the most familiar thing in the world – in any world, this one or the last or any one that might come to them again, thousands of years in the future.  They were – they were Gimli’s _self_ , condensed into breath and voice, and with them they brought the weight of knowledge and understanding and memory –

Gimli clutched Legolas’s hands as it crashed down upon him, those hands that seemed the only thing grounding him in the world he knew; the rest of him was spinning through a world made of blurry impressions of sights and sounds; year after year flashed through his head – _Erebor_ – _Ithilien_ – _Aglarond – Valinor_ – he remembered work and fear and play and love and Legolas – always, always Legolas.

He remembered dying.

Well – he did not remember his death itself, but he remembered his deathbed: he remembered the weakness in his limbs and lungs; the knowledge that he was not long for the world he knew.  He remembered the hands clasped in his own – the same that held him now so firmly.  He remembered whispering his name with the last strength he had, he remembered Legolas saying that he would never forget it – that he would keep the name by him always and keep Gimli’s spirit alive and with him for all time –

And then there was nothing.

“Legolas,” he gasped, surfacing, and he could see nothing but he leaned forward blindly anyway; Legolas caught his mouth with his own, and then they were kissing like he was sinking in memory and Legolas was the air that kept him from drowning.

“I remember,” he choked, when they separated for air, and Legolas made a tiny gasping sound like a sob, and kissed him again.

When they could finally bear to part, Gimli felt himself swaying, as though all that had come into his mind in such a short space was too much to keep himself upright.  “How?” he whispered to Legolas.  “How did you come to be here?”

“I had hoped you could tell me,” Legolas said.  He too was whispering, as though the space between them had become too sacred to disturb with raised voices.  Maybe it had.  “I know too little.”

“What is the last thing you remember?”  Legolas had been the one to give Gimli his memories back, after all.  He must know more about this than Gimli did!

Legolas’s eyes skidded away from Gimli’s to fix on his own knees.  “I fear you will be disappointed,” he murmured.

“Disappointed?  How could I ever be disappointed when whatever happened served to bring you here?”

“I do not know for certain what happened, but . . . I remember little beyond your death, Gimli.  First you were there, and then you were not, and all that I knew was an icy, aching loneliness that robbed me of all my senses, save time.”  Legolas gripped his hands hard and shivered again – and only now did Gimli understand what was so wrong about that motion.  “I wish I did not have to tell you this, but I fear I may have done what you begged me not to.”

“What I begged . . .” Gimli let his voice trail off.  His memory was coming back still: patchy, stretched too thin in places – but he thought he knew what Legolas meant.  He couldn’t remember an exact conversation, but there was a feeling instead: a gnawing anxiety that he had carried with him for all their time together, one that had grown stronger in the last years of his life.  “You mean . . .”

Legolas nodded.  “I do not know,” he said softly, “for no elf has ever been known to come back from it before, but – it is a curious thing, to _remember_ nothingness.  I know that the grief at your death was overwhelming; I can only assume that it drove me where so many of my kindred had gone before.”

“Into fading,” Gimli said, forcing himself to speak the words that Legolas seemed so reluctant to say out loud.

Legolas nodded.

Gimli bowed his head until his forehead touched their joined hands.  The thought of Legolas’s bright spirit being lost to the world brought a lump to his throat, but . . . “I cannot blame you,” he said.  “I did not understand before, but I” – He remembered how empty he had felt in the months before the spirit had seized him, how easy it had been to end a relationship that had barely scratched the surface of his consciousness, that had been nothing more than an attempt at going through the motions of life.  He hadn’t known what was missing then, but to know, to live for a while with that love that made everything so much brighter – and then to lose it and return to the emptiness, this time with the memory of what you’d lost?  And to know that there was no end in sight, not ever?  “I am sorry, again, for leaving you.”

“But you found me,” Legolas said.  “I had – I know not how to describe it.  For so long there was simply nothing but empty loneliness.  And then suddenly there was . . . a call.  It was as though some thread of my spirit remained, and was being called forth from the nothingness, and every day it grew stronger.”

“I felt it, too,” Gimli whispered.  “I thought it was a muse, a rush of inspiration – oh, this will sound so strange, Legolas, but when you said I was still a craftsman, you spoke truly.  I do not know how your spirit came to be here, but I know about your body, for it was I who shaped it.  I carved your likeness from a block of marble, every day urged on by a spirit begging me to shape it.  I think perhaps that thread of your spirit was calling _me_.”

Legolas gazed down at his hands, as though he expected them to turn suddenly to stone.  “Then you are my salvation,” he said.  “Pulled me free from an immortal unlife of lonely drifting – and ah, now I see why they call it the Gift of Men.  For you are a man now, Gimli, are you not?  And so am I.”

“I am,” said Gimli.  “I know my past self would have found that strange, but in this world I was born thus, so it is easier to accept.  But you – no.”  He reached out to finger the tip of Legolas’s ear, and Legolas tilted his head into the touch, as he had always done before, a lifetime ago.  “I made you, remember; you are as elf as you were before.”

But Legolas shook his head.  “In looks, and even, perhaps, in spirit.  But this is Arda no more, and the elves are gone.  I am as mortal as you are, my love.”

Gimli’s eyes fell to the blanket still wrapped around Legolas’s shoulders, and his mouth dropped open in horror.  He shouldn’t be so distressed by it; Legolas’s immortality had been the source of their problems the first time around, but still it felt so wrong.  “You are sure?”

Legolas nodded.  “I can feel it.  The song around us has shifted; I can hear it yet, but I am no longer bound to it as I was.  I do not know what this will mean – though I have seen enough already to know that it will not be easy.”  His voice turned scolding, abruptly.  “I cannot answer as I once could, but I can hear the world crying out in agony.  Gimli, what _is_ this world?  What has been done to it?”

It was nothing to laugh at, Gimli knew, but he chuckled sadly anyway.  “You will hate it when I tell you,” he said.  “And doubtless you will set yourself immediately to the task of setting it all right.”  They were still speaking the language that he now knew as Khuzdul, and it hit him all at once what a task he had ahead of him.  “Ah, there is so much you have to learn – and so much I will have to explain!”  What he would tell the others at the studio about what had happened to his statue, he had no idea.  How he would explain Legolas’s sudden presence to anyone – even less.  But he was less concerned about those things than the sudden fact of Legolas’s mortality, which he couldn’t seem to let go of.  “But you – will you be all right?”  It was not what he wanted to say, exactly, but it was the best phrasing he could manage.

Legolas squeezed Gimli’s hands and brought them to his lips.  “It will not be easy, maybe,” he said softly, the words brushing his lips over Gimli’s knuckles.  “As you say, I have much to learn, and evidently there is much to lament about the state of this place.  But how can I bemoan this world when you are here – when beyond all my wildest hopes we have been brought together once more?”

He smiled again, and all traces of sadness faded away from his face in the glow of its brilliance.  Gimli, watching, could do nothing but smile helplessly in return, Legolas’s last words still reverberating in his mind and his soul.

“Together,” he echoed, and the word felt like a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all for now! I have a couple ideas for other scenes that I'm trying to play with a bit, but I think this makes a complete arc and satisfies my auction obligation. :) I hope you've enjoyed, and if you have ideas for other things you'd want to see, feel free to come scream at me in the comments! I can't promise to write them, but I do promise much playful conversation! :)


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